Bonds of Flesh, Bonds of Blood
by cowgirlfromhell
Summary: What if it had been John who came to Sam instead of Dean? Are the Winchester family bonds still tight? And are the bonds of flesh stronger than those of blood? As always, I bow to the creative genius of Eric Kripke and hope he is a forgiving man.
1. Chapter 1

Sam Winchester opened his eyes. His heart rate was only slightly elevated and his breathing was fairly even so he knew it hadn't been one of his terrifying nightmares that had awakened him but something else entirely. Something he'd been taught to recognize and to appreciate...danger.

Instinctively he knew someone, or something, was in the house with him even before he heard the sound of creaking floorboards and caught a glimpse of a passing shadow. He quietly slipped from the bed and made his way through the dark into the living room and grabbed the Louisville slugger that rested in the corner.

Sam moved closer and watched as the shadowy figure bent over his desk seemingly searching for something in the dark. He raised the bat but before he could swing the figure spun around, squatted down and, with a sweeping motion of one leg, kicked Sam's feet out from under him.

One second he'd been ready to knock someone's head out of the ballpark and the next he was flat on his back, a booted foot to his throat and the cold steel barrel of a well-oiled shotgun resting against his chest directly over his heart. Sam tried to dislodge the boot and felt the pressure on his neck increase. He strained to see in the dark but couldn't recognize his assailant. He could, however, hear him when he finally spoke up.

"Whoa, easy, tiger," the all too familiar voice said.

It was a rich voice, deep and hinting of laughter and Sam felt his insides clench as fear, anger and deep-seated yearning created a nauseating emotional stew inside of him. "Dad?" Sam's mouth had gone dry and caused his voice to crack like an adolescent's.

John Winchester lifted his foot from his son's neck, stepped back to the desk and flipped on the lamp. His handsome visage was split wide with a grin and his eyes sparkled, as much from the joy of seeing his son again, as from the adrenalin coursing through his body after Sam's attempted ambush.

"You scared the crap out of me," Sam whispered harshly. He was both pissed and embarrassed. Ashamed he had been caught unprepared and flatfooted and angry that his own father had stuck a shotgun, almost assuredly fully loaded, into his chest.

"That's cause you're out of practice, Sammy," John said with a half smile.

Sam saw the smile as a smirk and his old friends failure, disappointment, frustration and regret joined the party and he wished John Winchester would just go and leave him to his hard won peace. But when John only laid the shotgun across the desk and continued to smile enigmatically at him, Sam knew his father hadn't come all the way from wherever to just say "Hi".

Rejected his father's outstretched helping hand, Sam demanded peevishly when he got to his feet, "Dad, what the hell are you doing here?"

"Well, I was looking for a beer," John answered flippantly trying to defuse the situation. He knew full well that his sudden and unorthodox homecoming had thrown Sam for a loop and, to his credit; he never would have attempted any kind of reconciliation if it hadn't been absolutely necessary.

John Winchester and his youngest son had parted on bad terms, to say the least, but after a while he'd come to terms with Sam's decisions. He and Dean had kept away so Sammy could continue on with his schooling and the hunting free life he so desperately wanted without any regrets.

But Sam Winchester was full of regrets, not the least of which was that his father had found out where he lived, and he asked him again, "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Okay, all right. We gotta talk." John stepped closer to his youngest son ready to grab him if he tried to bolt but Sam stood his ground.

"Uh, the phone?" he suggested.

"If I'd have called would you have picked up?" John wanted to know and within seconds he could see the answer in Sam's face.

"Sam?" It was Jessica Moore. She was sleep tousled and utterly gorgeous and John smiled and nodded his approval.

"Jess, hey," Sam said and pulled her close, "Dad, this is my girlfriend Jessica."

"Wait, your dad?" the tall blonde asked hardly able to believe her eyes.

John acknowledged the nightshirt she was wearing with a laugh and told her, "Sammy used to love the Smurfs."

Thoroughly embarrassed, her cheeks colored prettily and she stammered, "Just let me put something on."

"It's okay. I need to borrow Sam here, talk about some private family business, but, uh, nice meeting you."

"No. No. Whatever you wanna say you can say it in front of her," Sam said forcefully hoping his father would recognize the fact that Jess was an integral part of his life, a life that had no place in it for hunting or hunters, no matter their relationship.

"Okay," John agreed but knowing his son he figured Jessica Moore knew nothing about the family business, "Um…Dean hasn't been home in a few weeks."

"So he's working over-time on a "Miller Time" shift; he'll stumble back in sooner or later."

"Dean's on a hunting trip and he hasn't been home in a few weeks," John added and Sam's whole demeanor changed.

"Jess, excuse us, we have to go outside." Sam led his father onto the landing and down the stairs, "I mean come on; you can't just break in, in the middle of the night, and expect me to hit the road with you."

"You're not hearing me, Sammy. Dean's missing; I need you to help me find him," John told him but Sam refuse to rise to the bait.

"You remember the poltergeist in Amherst, or the devil's gates in Clifton? He was missing then, too," Sam countered.

"Not for this long. Now you gonna come with me or not?"

"I'm not. I swore I was done hunting for good."

"Come on, it wasn't easy, but it wasn't that bad, Sammy."

"Yeah? When I told you I was scared of the thing in my closet, you gave me a .45."

"Well, what was I supposed to do?"

"I was 9 years old. You were supposed to say, "Don't be afraid of the dark"."

"Don't be afraid of the dark? What, are you kidding me, of course you should be afraid of the dark! You know what's out there!

"Yeah I know but still- the way we grew up after mom was killed, and your obsession to find the thing that killed her, but we still haven't found the damn thing, so we kill everything we can find."

"Save a lot of people doing it, too."

"You think mom would have wanted this for us? The weapons training and melting the silver into bullets. Dad, we were raised like warriors."

"So, what are you gonna do? You just gonna live some normal, apple-pie life? Is that it?"

"No. Not normal. Safe."

"And that's why you ran away?"

"I was just going to college. You said if I was gonna go, I should stay gone. And that's what I'm doing."

"Well, your brother's in real trouble if he's not dead already, I can feel it. I can't do this alone."

Sam knew his father well enough to suspect his motives and assured him, "Yes, you can."

"Yeah, well, I don't want to," John said almost petulantly.

"What was he hunting?" Sam asked with a sigh as John stepped to the back of his pickup and lifted the cover to his cache of weapons, each one methodically stored and lethal as hell.

"All right, let's see. Where the hell did I put that thing?" he wondered aloud. He lifted a particularly nasty looking machete up and out of the way and found the beat-up leather journal he'd been searching for. Pulling a couple of newspaper articles from between the pages he handed them to Sam. "Dean was checking out a small cluster of dead bodies found in and around Coos Bay, Oregon.

"So when Dean left to go play Dr. G, medical examiner, why didn't you go with him?"

"I was working my own gig, this voodoo thing down in New Orleans."

"And you let him you go on a hunting trip by himself?"

"Sam, he's twenty-six," John reminded him as he fished in his jacket for his cell phone, "He's hunted on his own for quite a while now."

That was something Sam hadn't known. He quickly perused the articles and his ire began to rise again and he pointed out, "All these occurrences say that there was little or no blood left in the corpses."

"So?" John replied and flipped his cell phone open, "Killed somewhere else, maybe on a boat, then dumped into the water."

"And the word "vampire" never entered your mind?"

"Why would it? As far as we know they're extinct so he's more than likely just tangled up with some kind of mass murdering nut job," John speculated easily. He knew Dean could handle himself in any kind of situation and if it weren't for the message he'd received from his eldest son, he would have never darkened Sam's door. John listened to make sure it was still stored in the phone's memory and handed it to Sam who put it up to his ear. It was definitely his brother's voice.

"Dad, it's me, Dean...I know I've been gone for a while now and that you're probably royally pissed off...but I just wanted you to know that I'm okay and..." the voice trailed off and Sam heard Dean clear his throat before he started again, "and that I love you...and Sammy...so please don't look for me because...like Thomas Wolfe said, you can't go home again."

Wondering if Dean's words were a warning or a battle cry, Sam repeated, "Can't go home again," and his meaning was not lost on his father.

John tossed the cell phone into the box along with his journal and closed the lid. He turned back to Sam and said, "You know in almost two years we've never bothered you. Never asked you for a thing."

His father was right and even though his brother was probably not missing at all but had finally decided to cut the cord and was shacked up somewhere with some girl he'd picked up in a bar, he reluctantly agreed to help. "All right. I'll go. I'll help you find him. But I have to get back first thing Monday. Just wait here."

"What's first thing Monday?"

"I have this…I have an interview."

"What, a job interview? Skip it," John suggested disdainfully.

Sam was hurt that his father would dismiss his plans so out of hand and explained to him, "It's a law-school interview, and it's my whole future on a plate."

"Law school?" John was both pleased and impressed with his son's obvious success...and his determination.

"So we got a deal or not?" Sam asked and when his father agreed he headed back inside to pack.

"Wait you're taking off? Is this about your brother? Is he all right?" Jessie asked worriedly as he pushed a sharp hook down into his duffel bag.

"Yeah, you know, just a little family drama."

"But your father said he was on some kind of a hunting trip."

"Aw yeah, he's just deer hunting up at the cabin and he's probably got Jim, Jack, and Jose along with him, and a hooker or two. We're just gonna go bring him back."

"What about the interview?"

"I'll make the interview. This is only for a couple of days," Sam told her as he headed toward the door, his face unreadable.

"Sam, I mean, please," Jess said plaintively, "Just stop for a second. You sure you're okay?"

"I'm fine," he assured her although he was far from it.

"It's just…you won't even talk about your family and now you're taking off in the middle of the night to spend the weekend with them? And with Monday coming up which is kind of a huge deal."

"Hey, everything's gonna be okay. I will be back in time-I promise," he said softly and gave her a kiss.

As he walked out the door she called after him, "At least tell me where you're going."

And the words "straight to hell" popped, unbidden and unwelcome, into his head.


	2. Chapter 2

Dean Winchester lay as still as death in the large bed. Dusk approached and he searched the impending gloom with eyes wide. He listened closely as the denizens of the dark began to awaken and stir and begin crawling across the buckled parquet flooring. The drapes fluttered in the breeze that filtered through panes of broken glass and he could hear the cold, untamed ocean below.

The old stone mansion in which he found himself was abandoned, had been for almost three quarters of a century. Its interior was moldy and crumbling around him and the incessant wind and crashing waves from the storms off the Pacific, on whose rocky cliffs it overlooked, seeped through every opening in the great stone blocks, rotting the lush interior, destroying expensive furniture and fabric alike.

In its day, it had been a haunt of the rich and famous. Today it was simply a haunt littered with the carcasses of dead animals instead of the carcasses of the wealthy; the primary reason the grand old dame had been boarded up and left to fall into disrepair. Who wanted a home, no matter how luxurious or how magnificent the views, if you ended up dead in your bed or on the jagged rocks below?

Through one of the broken windows cased in floor length drapes of rich, red silk, blown with age and sunlight, an early evening star fell to earth in a barely visible streak of fire and flamed out before hitting the sea. Taking in a deep breath of pungent air, Dean sighed and wondered how he, too, had fallen so quickly and so far. He turned his head and glanced to his immediate left and sniggered. _Oh, yeah, that's how._

Next to him an enticing bare hip rose up out of the clumps of damp, shredded bedding, pale and silky smooth, not a scar or a wrinkle marring the translucent skin that shown as if lit by candle light in the encroaching darkness. The hunter and the hunted lay together amidst rampant decay, surrounded by the remnants of another time. _But hey, any port in a shit storm, right?_

Taking another deep breath Dean smelled the odor of moldering opulence mixed with the stench of blood-drained animals and his stomach growled. The sun was now fully gone and he needed to feed just as they needed to go because other hunter's voices sounded close by.

Dean reached out to touch his partner's hand as she slept and, like a dog reared in a cramped kennel with a large pack of littermates, she growled and snatched it away. Unconcerned he simply laughed. If she had bitten him he would have savored the pain.

He rolled closer to her and buried his face in her wild, black hair, its shear mass and length hiding her face and covering her bare shoulders as she lay on the stained mattress. And although she never bathed, it was soft and as shiny as a crow's wing and smelled like the sweetest wine or, in his case, the headiest beer.

Rubbing his hardening body against her small, lithe form, her eyes opened to reveal both intelligence and cruelty in their shining green depths. She stretched like a cat and pushed herself against him. Like him, she hadn't lost the physical sexual response and, although it wasn't 'their way' of making love, they were both neophytes and retained that much of their humanity, if very little else.

Dean reached for her but she wouldn't be caught unaware and defenseless. She could smell the hunters as they moved in to surround them and sitting up she turned to look down on him and ruffled his short, wildly spiked, dark blond hair. His green eyes were hooded with lust and she rolled onto him and kissed his full lips, her small, sharp teeth eliciting a yelp as blood covered her tongue.

Dean bucked his hips, grinding against her, and let out a groan but she shushed him with a finger to his torn lips. The voices were now only a few yards away and boots carelessly crunched gravel in the overgrown driveway and snapped twigs from fallen tree limbs. In minutes the rotting boards on what was left of the porch creaked and moaned arthritically as a pair of hunters, a man and a woman, made their way up the stairs and into the house through a broken window, the plywood covering torn away by vandals.

As they had once lain side by side on the mattress, Dean and the girl now hovered just below the ceiling beams and watched as the hunters burst in, sharpened stakes and a shotgun loaded with shells of silver crucifix shards at the ready.

"We're too late," the woman spat out angrily and lifted the bed covers with the end of the shotgun barrel. She placed her hand on the mattress and felt the iciness where they'd slept just minutes before, "But we just missed 'em."

"Not quite," a voice said from above, "We're just on vampire time."

As the female hunter unloaded the shotgun into the air, in the blinking of an eye; the female vampire was on the man and sank her teeth into his beefy, thick-skinned neck.

Blood seeping from the myriad of cuts that covered his body, Dean came to earth slowly, the silver embedded in him already poisoning him, killing him the same way a human would have been poisoned and killed by lead shot...slowly and agonizingly. With a thin smile on his face he walked slowly toward the woman and she pumped the shotgun again. He yanked it from her hands, breaking her wrist and her trigger finger in the process, before she could fire another round into him but her cry of distress was drowned out by the bellow of pain from her husband.

His screams grew weaker and weaker as his blood supply ran lower and lower and much to her dismay the consecrated silver she'd fired into the vampire wasn't enough to kill or even cripple him. She tore her eyes away from his naked and bleeding torso to look into his eyes and blinked rapidly when she recognized them. "I know you," she rasped out, terrified, breathing rapidly, "I know your father, your brother. You're a hunter."

"Not any more," Dean told her simply. Her revelation made no difference to the outcome of this particular hunt, her last one. She was dead, plain and simple, and she saw it in his eyes as he smiled, his face even more handsome as his k-nines distended slowly, white and sharply pointed.

He watched as her eyes grew wide and her breath became even more ragged. Her heart beat so wildly in her chest that he thought it might explode and cheat him out of a hearty breakfast, the most important meal of the day. Dean listened to her pounding heart and rushing blood he knew he should feel guilty at the least but the shards of silver embedded in his body burned like red-hot razorblades and he couldn't dredge up a single sliver of remorse or regret. Her terror only fueled his blood lust and his deep-seated, almost painful, hunger and he felt nothing but rage.

Dean breathed in, the air thick and sweet with the smell of her fear, and he couldn't hold back any longer. His fangs sank deep into her neck and he cut off and swallowed her scream as warm blood gushed into his mouth, over his tongue and down his throat. It dripped down the sides of his face and began to calm the hunger and sooth the rage...if only for a little while.


	3. Chapter 3

The hunter's blood mixed with the poison of the silver and Dean Winchester's guts felt as if they were being skewered by knitting needles. He let the woman drop with a sickening thud and sat down on the edge of the bed. Through his pain he heard his companion say, "I just love breakfast in bed," and, stretching out her shapely leg, she pushed the corpse of the male hunter off of the bed.

"His name was Bill and this," Dean told her pointing to the weak but still very much in the world of the living hunter, "is Ellen."

"You son of a bitch," Ellen whispered and swallowed painfully tasting her own blood in her throat as she looked at her husband's body.

His insides roiling, Dean grimaced in pain and doubled over and told her, "I could have stopped her if you hadn't gut shot me." He nodded toward the woman's husband, Bill Harvelle, a friend of his father's.

"Well, you're pretty much fucked anyway," Ellen said and tried to sit up. She recoiled from his outstretched helping hand and hissed, "Don't touch me."

"I'll finish her if you can't," his companion offered and Dean chuckled between stabs of agonizing pain. "Thanks, Ali, but I think I'm gonna let her go."

"What? Are you nuts?" The vampire pushed her hair out of her face and scooted closer to Dean to get a better look at the steaming wounds on his body. She pinched a silver shard not too deeply buried and quickly pulled her fingers away as the metal seared her skin. "Oh, baby, that's really gotta hurt."

He gave her a "no, duh" look and closed his eyes as a shiver ran the length of his body.

"She's right, you know. If you let me go, I'm gonna come after you again...for Bill," Ellen vowed weakly.

Dean turned feral eyes on her and told her, "We're gonna take you to Bobby Singer's and dump you there and, when you're strong enough, you're gonna try and beat me to wherever it is that you've hidden Jo." At the mention of her daughter Dean could see the panic and fear in Ellen's eyes. It was just the reaction he wanted.

From the first moment she'd met him Joanna Beth Harvelle, now twenty, had had a major crush on Dean Winchester and, although she put up a good front, she was still just a hunter wannabe. Always ensconced somewhere safe while her parents hunted down the evils of the world, Jo Harvelle had no practical training or field experience and when he'd first met her he'd blown off the ten year old tag along, just like any other self respecting fifteen year old seasoned hunter would have done.

But he was older and wiser and a vampire now, all the things that should have struck fear into Ellen's heart and the thought of vengeance from her mind and, when the monstrous events that had just transpired finally hit home, he was fairly certain he would never see either of them again in his lifetime. Not because it was the smart thing for Ellen to do but because he was fairly certain he was going to die.

"Who's Bobby Singer?" Ali asked running her pink tongue over her bloody teeth.

"Someone who means a lot to me so you just behave and keep your hands to yourself," he warned her and she curled up her lip at him, her eyes darkening.

Alison Whitehall was thirty, would be thirty until the end of time if she were lucky. She was four years older than Dean Winchester and, at times, sorely resented him when he bossed her around. She also hated his ridiculous code of conduct, of misguided honor and loyalty. 'No, you can't eat him, Ali,' 'No, you can't just rip her head off, Ali,' 'Ali no, leave them alone, they're only kids'.

It was infuriating, almost like living with her piece of crap ex-husband again, only his code of conduct, when broken, resulted in severe beatings for every infraction as well as time spent locked in a closet. Ali had made Dean Winchester and he owed her his life, such as it was, but he never seemed to really appreciate it. It was something he never really freely embraced but he was vampire nonetheless and should act like one, like her, like her maker.

If he hadn't been shot, Ali was sure that Dean would have tried to stop her from killing the man even though the hardened hunter would have staked them both without a second thought. And even Dean had to admit that human blood tasted so much better than cow's blood, or pig's blood or bloody chipmunk's blood. In her mind, everybody was fair game and when she got up on all fours to make her way to the edge of the bed where Ellen Harvelle rested, he grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her back with all his remaining strength. She flew off of the bed and across the room crashing into the rotted frame of what had once been a dresser.

Thoroughly pissed off now she literately flew at him and knocked him onto the floor. As she lay on top of him her face inches from his, the silver pieces embedded in his skin searing hers and her razor sharp teeth bared like a rabid dog's, she reminded him in a harsh whisper, "I'm your maker."

"Then act like it," he hissed back and grabbing the back of her head he kissed her passionately, hungrily and demanded, "and give me what I need."

Despite the pain of the silver, her body responded to his and he rolled her over and covered her. She eased her head back, closed her eyes and offered up her graceful neck, moaning when he sank his teeth into her artery. Dean drank headily, hoping her preternatural blood would keep him alive until he could absorb the silver into his system, if that was even possible, or until they could get it all out.

Unable to move Ellen watched the lurid moonlit love affair as it played out before her. She quickly looked around in the darkness for one of the stakes. Even if she'd found one she was still too weak to use it so she just closed her eyes and tried not to envision Jo in the place of the brunette from which Dean fed. It was hard because her headstrong daughter would more than likely find the new and improved Dean Winchester all the more appealing. What young woman, after reading Dracula, hadn't fallen in love with the count or with Anne Rice's Lestat de Lioncourt or Louis de Pointe du Lac despite what they were and the heinousness of their deeds?

No, she wouldn't kill him, Ellen decided. What she would do was tell John Winchester that his precious first-born had helped kill his best friend and that Dean was no better than all the other evil they sought to destroy. Then she would go to her daughter and make sure she never laid eyes on Dean Winchester again.

Finished feeding and fornicating Dean rolled off of Ali and the two of them lay together on the floor, their glowing bodies bathed in moonlight. As satiated as he was, the beautiful metal in him continued to leak its deadly poison and he sat up laboriously and smacked Ali's bare ass. "We gotta get going. It'll take at least twenty hours to get to Bobby's."

"We're driving?" she asked and wondered why they couldn't fly...just once.

"I'd never make it through the metal detector," he told her, "And besides..."

"You could never leave the love of your life behind," she finished for him and as she got up off of the floor she looking down on him and added, "Sometimes I think you love that damned car more than me."

"I love you, Ali," he told her honestly, "but for all the wrong reasons". Alison Whitehall was his maker and that fact in itself commanded his love but for the rest of his life he would regret that night, three weeks earlier, when he'd first met her. The night he'd walked into Saints and Sinners.


	4. Chapter 4

"Saints and Sinners." Dean Winchester snorted as he read the flickering neon sign above the entrance to a small crappy bar, his small strapped duffel bag containing ten or so sharpened spikes hooked over one shoulder.

_First, I'll deal with the sinners_, _he decided, then see how many times I can get a saint to scream out "Oh, God" in one night._

The bar was dark and crowded and from all the black leather, club patches, beer guts and facial hair the sinners outnumbered the saints by about ten to one. But he wasn't looking for a big bad biker. He was looking for a sinner of a different caliber, a vampire he believed to be the source of the small nest he had decimated just hours before.

To a one they had all described a tall man with long blond hair and piercing blue eyes as the one who had made them...just before he unmade them with sharpened spikes of cherry wood, a hard wood that could withstand a lot of abuse and smelled good as it turned vampires into disgusting, stinking corpses.

Pushing through the crowd gathered around the bandstand Dean made his way to a booth and sat down. In moments a woman dressed in a black tank top and faded jeans came over to his table. She leaned over to wipe it down, her tumble of long, black hair hiding her face.

Pushing the heavy mass to one side she looked at him appreciatively, "What'll it be, angel cakes?"

"I'll have a Jack and a beer back, sweetheart," he told her with a smile. The waitress was an absolute stunner and when she smiled back at him and winked, a very good sign, he knew that before her shift was done she would be his "saint" and as he watched her walk back to the bar he said a quick thank you to the patron of incredibly firm butts, St. Pilates. But the signs quickly turned ominous when, as he continued to watch her, she handed off her tray to one of the other waitresses and tossed her apron on the bar. She then headed into the kitchen.

Leaning against one of the cars parked behind the bar the waitress lit up a cigarette and took a deep drag. As she exhaled a plume of blue gray smoke someone said, "You know, smoking is hazardous to your health." The deep, sensuous voice floated out of the darkness and the woman pursed her lips in irritation. Like assholes, everybody had an opinion on smoking but why this jackass insisted on interrupting her break to express it was beyond her.

"Who wants to live forever, dickhead?" she replied hostilely and, before she could take another drag, she was roughly knocked to the ground. Someone sat heavily on top of her and sucked so hard on her neck that she knew, come morning, she would have the mother of all hickeys.

Breaking his kiss of death he of the disembodied voice replied, "I do. I want to live forever," and the tall blond haired man with piercing blue eyes who'd drained her to the point of death ripped open his wrist and placed it to her mouth.

Moments later Dean Winchester came out into the alleyway and stopped dead in his tracks. He watched as the hunched figure threw back his head, long hair spilling down his broad back, and growled with pleasure and pain as the waitress took what he offered, eternal life for her and the continuation of a long and noble line for him.

The blond growled again as the girl continued to feed from him and, lost in the ritual as old as time, the vampire Dean had been hunting didn't hear him coming up behind him. For a split second he did smell the pungent odor of cherry wood and, although he had preternatural speed and strength, the vampire had just created a neophyte and his powers were sorely depleted and no match for the hunter or the stake he plunged into his back so hard that it shattered bone and ripped through sinew to pierce his heart before the tip exited out his chest.

As the vampire toppled slowly over the waitress looked up at Dean. Her eyes shown with what he could have easily mistaken for gratitude but he knew better. "I'm sorry," he said as he pulled a second spike from his bag.

Rico Suave wanted to drill her next, and not in the good way, the waitress realized and she vowed she would not go gentle into that good night. Having learned a thing or two from her ex, the son of a bitch, she backhanded Dean viciously across the face and the force of the blow tossed him into a row of garbage cans.

She rose up and watched her assailant as he struggled to regain his senses and his footing for a few moments before she heard a warning in her head. As her maker before her had done she was on her would be killer in a flash of preternatural speed and sat heavily on his body. Bending over him she tasted blood as her fangs broke through virgin gum and sank them deep into his warm, sweet smelling neck. She, too, began to feed until he was on the brink of death, his eyes closed, his handsome face serene.

Sitting back, Dean Winchester's blood racing through her veins, she learned everything about him including his deepest, darkest secrets and his name. With his vast wealth of hunting knowledge and experience her instinct for self-preservation kicked in but, instead of killing him to assure her survival for the moment, she decided to turn him. Through the blood she would make him one with her, her son, her lover. Who better than a hunter to protect her while she explored the strange new feelings that flowed through her body and the strange new powers she possessed?

But Dean Winchester was having none of it. He tried to throw her off, to keep her from feeding him her blood, but he was no match for her strength and when the first few drops touched his lips and ran into his mouth and over his tongue, he suddenly wanted nothing more than to drink from her...and drink he did.

His teeth tore at the flesh of her wrist as his ever strengthening hands held her hard and fast to him crushing delicate bones. His feeding was painful and sensuous all at the same time and the woman's head began to spin and her breath quickened. She could have easily let him bleed her out completely, which was exactly what he was trying to do, but she balled up her fist and punched him in the temple breaking his lethal lip-lock on her.

Standing she moved away from him and into the shadows and bent down to look at her neck in the side view mirror of one of the cars. She was amazed to see that her skin was unmarked, smooth and luminescent. She was also amazed that she could see perfectly well in the dark and putting a finger to her mouth she pushed up on her upper lip. Her teeth looked okay, too, regular sized, straight and Colgate white. She dropped her chin to try to smooth her disheveled hair and noticed that her wrist and fingers were perfectly fine, the bones having miraculously healed.

This is so weird, she thought, and for a moment the vampire fledgling wondered if she was having some sort of drug flashback. She didn't think so but her reprieve from the twilight zone was short lived. The stud muffin was coming at her again, this time with a fragrant spike clutched tightly in his hand. She turned on her heel and left him flat footed in the alleyway staring dumbly after her.

"You can run bitch," Dean rasped out under his breath as he stooped to gather up his duffel bag, "But you can't hide." He picked up his 'kill' and effortlessly dumped it and the duffel bag into the Impala's trunk and, after burning the vampire's remains in a secluded parking lot, he arrived at waitress extraordinaire Allison Whitehall's apartment withlless than half an hour before sunrise.

Dean had planned to stake and bake her, to leave her out in the front yard when the sun rose, but, when he found her laid out on her bed, hands crosses over her breasts like a corpse in repose in a coffin with dried rivulets of blood tears streaking her face, he hesitated. Whether it was the blood tears or the blood ties that now bound them, or his fear of being truly alone for the very first time in his life, he couldn't do it.

He quickly locked all the doors and windows and pulled the blinds closed. He then picked up Sleeping Elvira, laid her on the floor next to the bed and stripped the covers off. Crawling under the bed he pulled her under after him and covered them both with the bedding then, wrapping his arms around her, he pulled her close, closed his eyes and surrendered to the dawn.


	5. Chapter 5

Sam couldn't believe how uncomfortable he felt simply by sitting next to his father on the pickup's bench seat as they traveled down highway 101 towards Coos Bay. After so many years and so many thoughtless remarks that could never be taken back he never imagined he'd end up in such close quarters with him again. The younger hunter swallowed nervously. He wanting to break the awkward silence in which they'd been traveling for the last ten minutes but rejected, as too volatile, every topic he thought of.

Noting Sam's reluctance to talk, John turned to glace sideways at his son and smiled. He himself had no such reservations when it came to asking questions or barking out orders and he broached a subject that had been on his mind since the moment he'd met her.

"When were you gonna tell me about Jess, Sammy?" John asked lightly and turned his eyes back to the dark ribbon of highway before them.

Sam heard the anger between the lines and thought, _never, _but knew better than to backtalk the mighty John Winchester. God, only ten minutes in his presence and he felt like he was ten years old again, afraid and mad all at the same time. "I didn't think you'd be interested," he replied flatly, his voice trailing off.

"Since when am I not interested in what you're up to?

"Since you haven't called me once since I left for Stanford," Sam spewed out and quickly wished he hadn't.

John just sighed, a pensive smile on his lips, and said, "I was just mad...and hurt."

"Why? Because I couldn't be the good little soldier Dean was? Because I didn't want to hunt?" Sam blurted out and surprised at his vehemence he wondered when his verbal diarrhea would stop.

"Sam, I know you're nothing like your brother. Dean was born for this, lives for this..." John tried to explain. He actually puffed up with pride for his first-born and a wide smile split his handsome face until Sam added.

"And maybe dies for this?" His father's face turned dark and Sam sighed, determined to spend the rest of his quality time with his father disguised as a mute.

"I don't really think Dean's dead; I just wanted you on board," John explained clearing his throat, "But he has been gone for three weeks and it's not like him to just leave a crappy cryptic message on my phone. Maybe it was a crocotta."

"No, that was Dean," Sam assured his father knowing his brother's voice as well as his own, "And maybe this one time we should just take what he said at face value. He doesn't want us to look for him and he doesn't want to come home."

The truck started to pick up speed and Sam knew he was pressing his father's buttons and that his anger was manifesting itself in a lead foot but he couldn't help himself. It seemed to him that whenever he was around his father he always said the wrong thing at the wrong time.

"Dean would never say something like that," John countered trying to keep his temper in check, "He knows I need him, that I rely on him."

Sam knew it was true and that the only reason he'd been able to leave home was because his dad still had Dean, his soldier of the first line. But every time he had caught Dean in an unguarded moment and really looked at him Sam could see that his brother had given up everything, every dream and aspiration he'd ever had and now every time he looked in the mirror he saw one of the main reasons Dean had done it.

Not helping his father look for Dean was never an option. It was totally screwed up but if he were put in the position of having to save one or the other Sam would choose Dean, the father John Winchester had never been. His older brother had always been the mediator, his primary caregiver and his friend and he would be forever grateful and, at the same time, forever guilt ridden.

"Maybe that responsibility's too much. Maybe that's why he's never coming home," Sam pushed again and John slammed on the brakes.

The pickup swerved off the road and came to a sudden stop on the shoulder. Sliding his arm across the back of the seat John turned and just stared at Sam who sat ram-rod straight, his eyes focused on the road's guardrail, his teeth clamped tightly together, his jaw working furiously. Lifting his hand John placed it on Sam's shoulder and he knew it took all of his son's resolve to not physically flinch from his touch.

"Sammy, I know we've been at odds...well, most of our lives," John started and squeezed his son's shoulder, "But I want you to know that I love you and that I'm so very, very proud of you."

Turning his head to the left Sam saw tears shimmering in his father's eyes. His throat constricted as his old companions, sadness and guilt, reared their ugly heads as John continued.

"I don't blame you for not wanting any of this, the killings, the salt and burns, the monsters. Hell, I don't even want it. But your mom, she left more than just you two behind. She left a legacy of hunting that started generations ago and to honor her memory and her sacrifice I carry on that tradition. And with Dean following in her footsteps, I guess it'll carry on long after I'm gone," he said and blinked back his tears as he paused to gather his thoughts, "So it's okay, Sammy. After we find your brother and you're one hundred percent sure he's doing this because he loves it, you can go back to your girl and your life. Just make sure to invite us to the wedding, okay?"

Sam just stared at his father. This was more than the man had said to him the whole last year they were a family and if he'd said those words at that time then just maybe he would have stayed. But he suspected that at the time pride wouldn't let his father speak his heart or maybe, in his heart of hearts, his father hadn't really wanted him to stay.


	6. Chapter 6

It took John and Sam a little under nine hours to reach Coos Bay and, after checking into the Sea Psalm motel where the two of them donned cheap suits and fake badges, they stopped to have breakfast at the Empire Cafe. The eatery was a typical diner, all chrome, Formica and plastic disguised as leather. They took seats at a booth in the back with a clear line of sight to the door and waited in silence until a middle-aged waitress looked up from the newspaper she was reading and glanced at them.

More FBI agents snooping around she figured and grabbed a pot of regular coffee. "Coffee gentlemen?"

"Yes, ma'am." John smiled and hooked a finger in his collar and circled it around his neck in a futile attempt to make it more comfortable. As the waitress leaned over to fill his cup he pulled his forged credentials and a photograph of Dean from his inside breast pocket. As she filled Sam's cup he asked her, "Have you seen this man? Would have been in the last couple of weeks."

She looked at the picture of Dean and smiled. "Oh, sure, hon, FBI Agent Hendrix, no relation to Jimmy," the last words were run together, a sure sign that Dean had introduced himself to her, "He came in...what, about three weeks ago askin' about the dead bodies that washed up on shore." As she stood, coffee pot in hand, she related the last of her information like it was an everyday occurrence. Sam looked at her quizzically and twisted his cup nervously and she added, "It not like it hasn't happened before."

John sat back and laid his arm on the back of the seat and asked, "It's happened before?"

"Oh, sure thing, hon. The first time was way back in forty-four, then in sixty-eight and again in eighty-two and now, just this last month."

"And no one thinks this is out of the ordinary?" Sam asked incredulously lifting his cup to his lips. He promptly scalded his mouth and thought crankily that diner coffee would be the death of him.

"Oh sure, if you're not from around here," the waitress added, "My mother was around during the war when the Mills family all died in the mansion on the bluffs and I was born and raised here and remember all the others."

"What about the condition of the bodies, the lack of blood?" Sam continued and tried to come off as only mildly interested.

"Honey, have you ever seen a body that's been in the water for days or weeks on end?"

Sam swallowed and replied, "Yeah, I have."

"Then you know how bloated and pasty white they are. Just looks like "vampires" got 'em," she said with a laugh and reached out to straighten his tie, "But it's just the water and the fish."

John chuckled good-naturedly to try and keep her well off the track and ordered eggs over easy, hash browns and toast. Sam ordered eggs benedict, not because he particularly liked them, but because his father was paying.

"Your man, he ordered a triple order of pig in a poke the day he came in. Ate every last bit and swore up and down he was gonna come back the following the morning but he never did. I sure hope nothin's happened to him...although a heart attack wouldn't surprise me one bit, even at his tender age."

John handed off his menu to her and told her, "He's probably just out of cell phone range but we need to investigate anyway."

"So what do you think happened to these people?" Sam asked quickly before she could get away.

"Like I told Agent Hendrix, no relation to Jimmy, there are plenty of people out on the ocean in fancy, million dollar yachts who shouldn't be. And as for the Mills family, money couldn't buy them happiness...or keep the old man from going bat shit crazy and tossing his entire family onto the rocks below."

"What happened to Mr. Mills?" John queried and slipped his badge holder and the photograph of Dean back into his breast pocket.

"Kept babbling about saving them from the devil, right up until the day they gassed him. Pretty pathetic if you ask me. "The devil made me do it"."

"Did Agent Hendrix ask for directions to the Mills place?" John then asked.

"Nope. But he did ask for directions to the nearest Catholic Church," she said thoughtfully, then added with a laugh, "and directions to the seediest bar in town. Guess he was gonna hedge his bets."

Sam knew that Dean was going to the church, not for confession, but to load up on holy water as did John who finished his cup of coffee and held it out for a refill.

The waitress poured him a second cup, set the pot on the table and noted, "Funny thing, Homeland Security investigating the FBI."

"It's a crazy world," John shrugged with a disarming smile.

The waitress just nodded her head and walked back to the counter muttering to herself, "Homeland Security, my ass."

"More vampire hunters, Joanie?" the cook asked as he wiped his brow on his shirtsleeve.

She made her way into the kitchen with her ticket and told him, "They say they're from Homeland Security and that they're lookin' for that FBI agent Hendrix."

"Send 'em on down to Saints and Sinners." the cook suggested, "Billy Alvaro says the guy stopped by there a couple weeks ago and ran off with his best waitress."

SN

The owner of Saints and Sinners had barely opened the back door in anticipation of his beer delivery when John and Sam pushed their way inside.

"This is special agent Michaels and I'm agent DeVille." Sam took the lead and gave a cursorily flash of his credentials to Billy Alvaro and watched as the man's swarthy completion turned pale.

"Mr. Alvaro, we're from Homeland Security," John explained as he surreptitiously checked out the kitchen.

Knowing they weren't from ATF or the IRS, two of any bar owner's least favorite government agencies, Billy began to breath a little easier.

"Mr. Alvaro," John began again holding out Dean's picture, "We're looking for this man."

Billy looked at the picture and snorted derisively, "Yeah, he was here."

"Great," Sam said enthusiastically, "Can you tell us where we can find him?"

"I haven't got a clue...but when you do find 'em, tell Ali she's fired."

"Them?" Sam queried.

"The guy comes in here, orders a beer, follows my best waitress out into the back and they both just disappear?" Both agents looked puzzled and Billy continued, "Without a trace. After about a week the sheriff and I checked out Ali's place but we didn't find anything out of the ordinary...other then a bunch of blankets wadded up under her bed."

"Maybe it was a family emergency," John suggested as Sam wandered back outside.

"She doesn't have any family. We're her family," Billy told him and pointed to his cook and a waitress who had just come in.

Sam walked around the cars parked in the back of the bar, the EMF meter held covertly in one hand the other on the non-business end of a wooden spike hidden under his jacket. Sweeping the area nothing registered and he breathed a sigh of relief. There was no demon sign but the machine couldn't rule out vampires. It couldn't detect them at all.

Sam went back inside the bar and heard Billy mention the old Mills place and when his father looked up at him expectantly he shook his head.

Disappointed, John continued to write on a small pad as Billy continued to speak.

"You take Seven Devils Road to Old Seven Devils Road and follow it to the end. You can't miss it. You should have the place all to yourselves because nobody goes up there anymore. Not even the Satan worshiping little shits over at the High School."

John's dark brows shot up and Billy snorted. "I guess they call 'em Goths nowadays. Dressed all in black and as moody and disagreeable as my wife when she gets the PMS. Not a pretty sight."

John closed his pad and tucked it into his pocket. He extended his hand and thanked Billy Alvaro for his help, what little he had to give. Outside the two of them got into the pickup, headed toward the south end of Main Street and took a right onto Seven Devils Road. They took another right onto Old Seven Devils Road and traveling toward the ocean came up and over a small rise. The old mansion stood before them in all its crumbling and faded glory.

Parking the truck the two of them got out and followed the steps up to the front door and forcing it open with brute force both John and Sam recoiled. The stench inside was overwhelming and most assuredly that of a dead body.

They followed the stink cautiously up three flights of stairs and finally into the master bedroom where John found the decaying body of his old friend Bill Harvelle lying next to the bed. He stooped to examine the body and noted that Bill's throat had been savagely punctured, ripped and torn. "Well, I guess they aren't all extinct," he commented and a shiver ran the length of Sam's body. "Let's get him outside. Do what we gotta do," John added with a resigned sigh.

Bill's body burned brightly and was reduced to the ashes of prayers and John Winchester mourned him, not for the "good" man he was because what they did precluded any goodness, but as an exceptional hunter and as a friend.

Sam was content to just remember the times his family had stayed with Bill, Ellen and Jo and as they scattered his ashes among the trees surrounding the building he wondered where Ellen and Jo were and if they knew Bill was gone.

Part of his question was answered when, back at the motel, John checked for messages on his cell phone. Retrieving the only one they listened together and as another hunter spoke Sam's stomached turned when he heard the underlying fear in that voice.

"John, this is Bobby Singer. Dean just brought me Ellen Harvelle. She not doing too good and Dean's shot up pretty bad. I've got him down in my panic room but I don't know how much longer I can keep him here."


	7. Chapter 7

Three weeks before, night had fallen and hit Dean Winchester like a ton of bricks, each and every one of them made out of shit. Starting badly upon his emergence from the sleep of the undead he smacked his head painfully on a box spring no less. Just how drunk had he been the night before, he wondered, to end up sleeping under a bed instead of on it?

He slid out from under the large queen size bed and stood up. He didn't recognize the bed or even the room for that matter. Its decor was too eclectic and too personalized to be a motel room and, although clean, it looked like the fashion police had busted in the door and had taken no prisoners.

Clothes were pulled out of the dresser drawers and the small closet and were strewn everywhere. Picking through a random pile Dean lifted up the sheerest, sexiest, black bra he'd ever seen and pressed it to his face. He inhaled deeply. It smelled of her, Allison Whitehall, and of him. His cologne, her perfume, his blood mixed with hers and suddenly he remembered it all and his head swam as he sat down on the bed.

When the shock subsided a little he looked around and wondered where the hell "his maker" had gone. Back to the bar? Back to her job? And as stupid as the idea seemed he felt it was exactly what Allison had done. She'd gone back home, to the only family she had, and he was determined to follow her, to stop her from doing something she would regret and that would reveal them both to the fine folks of Coos Bay, Oregon.

Stopping to pick up his jacket and his car keys, which he had laid on the kitchen table the night before, he felt his stomach cramp with a sudden and overwhelming hunger. He opened the refrigerator door and found only a solitary can of beer which he grabbed and chugged down without thinking.

He crushed the can with inordinate strength but before he could lob it into the recycle bin for two points he grabbed his midsection and the entire contents came back up with a vengeance and covered the white porcelain of the sink with blood tinged, frothy foam. Pain sliced through him again as his hunger grew and his stomach continued to rebel.

Dizzy, his body growing weaker by the minute, he bolted out the door and down the stairs of the apartment complex. Looking around in the darkness for someone, anyone, he found the parking lot empty and stumbled to the Impala. He caught the flash of something out of the corner of his eye and Mrs. Henderson's cat Fluffy joined the rash of pets, both cats and dogs, that had recently gone missing in the area.

Wiping his mouth on the back of his hand he almost threw up a second time and wondered fleetingly how his father would feel about his son sucking a cat dry? Disappointed for sure and pretty pissed off when he found out how Dean had mishandled the situation. How he'd gotten cocky and let down his guard and how, just maybe, he hadn't really been ready to hunt on his own.

As the nausea passed Dean became filled with rage and his hands gripped the Impala's steering wheel tightly until the feeling subsided. He figured there was no use crying over spilled blood and he started the car and headed downtown to Saints and Sinners, his connection to Allison Whitehall growing stronger with each passing mile.

Stopping near the alley in back of the bar he could hear her thoughts and feel her anger, her pain and her confusion. Her hunger, not partially relieved with a cat d'oeuvre, consumed her and made his connection to her both powerful and painful and he found her easily enough hiding in the shadows. "You can't go inside," he said from out of the darkness.

She turned and caught by surprise hissed like a scalded cat. For whatever reason, maybe her all consuming hunger, she hadn't heard him coming, hadn't felt him as he made his way unerringly to her and she stared at him, her face a mask of cold, hard beauty, eyes green ice, pale skin glowing against the wild tumble of coal black hair and he felt himself becoming aroused.

"Go away," she commanded.

Dean snorted disdainfully and came to stand next to her. "I will...but you need to come with me."

"Can't you feel it?" she asked and turned her eyes back to the door expectantly.

"Which one will it be do you suppose?" he asked and she turned back to look at him, at the hand he rubbed slowly down her arm, "Mary Ellen Price come on down. She has kids...they'll miss her."

Allison curled her lip contemptuously and said, "Your breath smells like cat."

His stomach heaved but he continued, "Maybe Frankie will bring out another case of dead soldiers. He thinks he's in love with you, you know."

"So?" Allison said petulantly and turned away from him wishing now that she had just killed Dean Winchester instead of turning him.

"Enough to die for you?" he whispered.

Allison was quiet for a moment, her thoughts a jumble in her head...and in his. When she turned back to him blood tears, thinner, more watery, more pink than red, ran down her alabaster face.

Dean took pity on her and slipped his knife from its sheath and putting his faith in her he threw caution to the wind and punctured his jugular vein. "It'll be okay, Ali, I promise."

He never saw her move; only felt her as she collided with him, her tongue languishing sensuously over his neck for a brief moment before her fangs sank deep into him and he felt an erotic mixture of pain and pleasure that very nearly brought him to his knees.

His blood flowed smoothly into her mouth and down her throat and Alison felt her ravenous hunger slake. His faith rewarded, she retracted her fangs and pulled her lips away. She didn't move away but continued to hold onto him as much for the comfort of his touch as for his need of her strength to keep him upright and on his feet. "It hurt so much," she started to explain.

But he knew the pain, both his and hers, and rested his forehead against hers. "It okay, Ali. We just need to get out of here and..." And what? They were vampire and not only were vampires not extinct they were two of many. With his background he felt it best to keep away from 'their kind' should they run across any and quickly searching her memories he decided the Mills' mansion was the perfect place to stay until he figured out what to do next.

SN

Worse than any motel he had ever stayed in the condition of the old mansion neither bothered him nor did the stink of rot and decay. He was just thankful for a safe haven and for the first few days he spent most of his time on the widow's walk on the roof, brooding, staring out at the blackness of the sea, listening to the breakers crash onto the boulders below.

He spent so much time on the roof that Allison started referring to him as Heathcliff or the Geico Caveman as he left it up to her to bring them the small game she ran down in the woods to help sustain them. For the most part Alison was satisfied with their symbiotic relationship that always began with the exchange of blood and ended with incredible sex. But she knew the taste of unadulterated human blood, his blood before she had turned him, and it was that which she craved and that which led her to her first kill and to their ultimate discovery.

SN

Tired of wearing the same few outfits again and again Alison had returned to her apartment late one night to fill a backpack with more clothing and as she made her way back up the beach to the cliffs on which the mansion perched she heard a couple making love. The vampire walked in the surf to hide her footfalls and watched the two of them until they were done.

The boy rolled off of the girl and onto his back, panting with his exertion. Sweat, which only she could see, glistening on his body and she suddenly found she couldn't resist him. His blood was so sweet, so warm and flowed so strongly from his ruptured aorta that it ran from her glutted mouth, down her chin and onto her clothing and when the girl opened her eyes and saw it all, she screamed so loudly and for so long that Allison, a preternatural light shining in her eyes, grabbed her by the neck intent on shutting her up by either drinking her dry or twisting her head around to break her neck.

But before Alison could finish the deed, pain shot up her arm as Dean Winchester twisted it snapping her wrist and when she finally released her grip on the girl he backhanded her knocking her far out into the surf. Running his hands through his hair in frustration Dean was rocked back on his heels until the frightened girl, thinking he was her knight in shining armor, grabbed him in a death grip.

The girl's heart beat furiously against his, the smell of blood was rife in the air and whether it came from Allison, who had begun to swim back to shore, or from the ancient blood that flowed in his veins he felt an invisible push. An unholy light suddenly glowed in his eyes and his fangs distended unbidden and the screams that had brought him to that spot on the beach at that moment in time started again growing in intensity to a crescendo before being cut short by a quick but merciless death.

When she made it back to shore Allison found, much to her chagrin, that the boy had bled out and that the girl was equally as dead and that Dean Winchester was nowhere to be found. Fueled by copious amount of human blood Ali grabbed both bodies, one under each arm, and willed herself off of the ground. She flew far out over the open ocean and dumped them unceremoniously into the sea then returned to the mansion.

She found Dean up on the roof but instead of brooding, which would have been so much more in character with his brother Sam, Dean was instead extremely agitated but he settled quickly when she came to him. He took her by the wrist he had broken and, guiding her with a hand to her back, pulled her into his arms. He pressed her to his chest and laid his cheek on the top of her head smelling the slightest tang of seawater in her hair and sighed. "All my life I've been taught to hate creatures like vampires. To hate, hunt and destroy them," he started. He felt her stiffen and pull away slightly and laughed mirthlessly. "Don't worry Ali, I'm not gonna hurt you...or do something stupid like stay up here and watch the sunrise. I've just been having a hard time getting used to...all of this...but the girl...the blood."

Ali looked up into his face and instead of seeing blood tears she saw a feral light shining in his eyes. She cupped his cheeks with her hands and lowered his face to hers and kissed him gently. "I didn't mean to." she whispered softly.

He shushed her. "Neither did I but we are what we are and if we're gonna survive we're gonna have to learn to adapt, control our urges and take just what we need...and stay clear of hunters."

"We could just kill 'em all," she suggested and he shook his head.

"No, we can't, Allison because just like the people at the bar they're my family. But I know how they think, how they react so we have the advantage. I think we can stay one step ahead of 'em, maybe give my dad a hand once in a while."

"He'll accept you like this?" she asked pointing to where her fangs hid.

"Oh, hell no," Dean said with a laugh, "He'll make a special effort to kill me. I fucked up Ali and if he finds out he won't let it go...ever."

"Well, then we'll just have to keep it from him." She stood on her tiptoes and ran her tongue the entire length of his neck.

He grabbed her shoulders and they sank to the floor of the widow's watch where he laid her down and pushed death and it's consequences from his mind and made love to her, first as a vampire, then as a man, each way as old as human kind itself.

And now, locked in Bobby's panic room, blood sweat dripping down his face Dean thought back to that night on the rooftop, the night of his first kill and he laughed because as if steered by fate the bodies Ali had so carefully dumped at sea had drifted back to shore only a few feet from where the loving couple had been savaged.


	8. Chapter 8

Dean Winchester lay prone on one of the two small army surplus cots that had been hastily pushed to the center of Bobby Singer's circular panic room. Ali sat next to him, his head in her lap, and watched as he labored to catch his next breath while she nursed the burns on the palms of her hands where she had mistakenly touched the walls of their prison. Crying out in pain she had cursed the over-cautious old bastard as he had doused the iron plates with a generous coating of lunar caustic, a mixture of salt intended to keep demons out and silver now used to keep the likes of them in. "I thought you said he was like a father to you," Ali bitched and blew cold, dead breath on her hands in a vain attempt to ease the pain.

Dean laughed weakly, "Yeah, one who can recognize a lie when he hears one and a monster when he sees one."

"What do you suppose he's gonna do to us, Dean?" she then asked and smoothed back the matted hair from his blood damp forehead.

Looking up at her with fever bright eyes he sighed, "He'll let us rot in here until we're too weak to put up much of a fight then, when the sun's just right, he'll slide back that plate in the ceiling and poof, ashes to ashes. Then he'll probably suck us up with his handy dandy Dust Buster." Dean pointed to the small portable vacuum sitting on Bobby's desk.

Ali snorted. "He thought of everything, didn't he? Iron, silver and salt, no square corners for a witch to hide..."

"There's no such thing as an old hunter," Dean told her and she had a new found respect for the older man's plans to be the first.

"What if he's already called your father?"

"Then he'll help him when he gets here," he said in no uncertain terms. He closed his eyes and hoped his father was near because he hurt, not just physically but emotionally, and he thought that maybe he just wanted the pain to end.

Dean had seen the look on Bobby's face when he'd carried Ellen into his house and deposited her on the hunter's tattered old leather couch, the puncture wounds on her neck angry red and still oozing fresh blood. Bobby's emotions had run the gamut from confusion, to fear, to stunned realization, and finally to disgust when he'd seen the guilt written plainly on Dean's face. Hoping to keep Ellen quiet until he could get the medical help he needed and the two of them could be on their way Dean and Ali had each fed from her not ten minutes before their arrival; a stupid idea that had landed them in the panic room.

"Your father, he could just kill you?" Ali wondered aloud inching out from under him.

"In a New York minute," Dean knew full well and told her as she stuffed one of the pillows under his head and rose up from her place on the cot.

Restlessly, she walked slowly around the room her eyes taking in the small desk, the sturdy bookcase filled with books on everything from the occult to dressing battle wounds in the field and, finally, the olive drab army surplus bag that hung from a hook welded to the wall. She lifted the bag from the hook and placed it on the floor.

Dean watched as she unzipped it and looked inside. "Any alcohol in there?" he asked and closed his eyes against the cold glare of the fluorescent lights that hung suspended on chains from the ceiling of the silo-like structure.

"Only rubbing and..." she lifted a small package triumphantly in the air, "Morphine!"

Never a huge proponent of drugs Dean made an exception and let her jab one of the sticks into his thigh. The rush was intense and some relief came almost immediately and his eyes rolled back in his head and his lips formed a crooked smile.

"How's the pain?" Ali asked solicitously kneeling on the floor next to the cot.

"On a scale of one to ten about a 'fuck me'."

"Good, that's down from a 'fuck me sideways'," she laughed then placed a piece of wood between his teeth and commanded, "Bite down on this because it's way too soon in our relationship to be meeting your stake wielding parent." Ali held up a scalpel and a pair of evil looking long nosed surgical forceps she had taken from the bag and made her intentions clear. She would not die in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, now or ever for that matter.

Pulling the wood from his mouth Dean asked thickly. "Chew know what'chr doin'?"

"Damn it, Jim, I'm a bartender not a doctor," she said gruffly and pushed the wood back between his teeth and he smiled, his eyes growing even more vacant. "Just remember, baby," she added as she unbuttoned his blood soaked shirt, "This is gonna hurt you more than me."

"Thanks, Ali," he mumble sarcastically around the wood then removed it again and added, "Just keep the morphine handy, m'kay."

Once again she pushed the wood between his teeth and threatened to duct tape it in place if he kept pulling it out to ask stupid questions or to make obvious demands.

Upstairs in the old ramshackle two-story house Bobby stood, a glass of cheap rotgut whiskey in his hand, and looked down at Ellen Harvelle.

She looked up at him, her eyes hard, her lips angrily pressed together forming a thin slash across her face. Sucking air in through her nose she sighed and asked, "Why didn't you kill him?"

Bobby pursed his lips and thought for a minute and wondered why he hadn't killed Dean when he first realized he was a vampire, a given in any other situation. "Probably because the kid's like a son to me."

"Oh, how proud _you_ must be," she said and gave him a withering glare, "You _and_ John."

"John doesn't know...yet."

"Well, give me the god damn phone. I'll tell him."

Bobby held out his hand offering not the phone to the female hunter but the libation. Ellen took it gratefully hoping to numb the pain in her throat as well as the one in her heart. "You know they killed Bill, don't you?"

"I guessed as much. It's just hard to think of Dean doing anything like that," Bobby said still standing awkwardly in front of her.

"He's not the sweet little boy you used to know!" Ellen declared hotly.

Bobby chuckled and told her, "Dean was never a sweet little boy."

Ellen slammed the whiskey glass down on the side table furious that he wasn't taking her or the situation seriously. "He's a monster and if you're not gonna take care of him, I will!" she shouted threatening to get up.

Bobby pushed her back down onto the couch and told her in no uncertain terms, "John Winchester is on his way and nobody, not you, not me, nobody is going to do anything to that boy until he gets here."

Ellen relaxed and wondered aloud, "Do you think he'll have the nerve?"

"Have you ever known John Winchester to back down from anything...even when he's wrong?"

"And you think this is wrong?"

"Hell yeah! This is seven kinds of fucked up! A man's son, his flesh and blood, turned into the very thing he hunts? So yeah, it's wrong...but John won't back down. He'll do what needs to be done," he said and, as suddenly as it had flared, the fire was gone from Bobby's eyes and the steel was gone from his voice and his shoulders slumped under a tremendous weight as he added softly, turning his head to the sound of a tortured scream rising up from below, "and I'll help him."

Dean had bitten clear through the piece of wood, his teeth slicing into the tender flesh of his own tongue. "Jesus, Ali," he panted and begged, "No more. Please. No more."

The vampire ignored him and jabbed him again with another morphine syringe and waited patiently for him to go deeper into his drug-induced stupor. She was done removing all the superficially embedded silver shards and started digging around with the scalpel and forceps and her fingers trying to locate the more deeply embedded shards. It was tedious and painstaking work but well worth it as she watched the lesser wounds heal completely in minutes. She would need him healthy and strong if they were to have any chance of getting away from "Uncle Bobby".

Her hands, deep in his intestines, were slick with his blood while even more of the tainted but precious fluid ran down his ribs to soak into the army blanket beneath him, the blood leaving dark, blackened patches where he lay. She guided the tip of the forceps with the tips of her fingers until finally she felt no more molten silver, just the chill of his rapidly healing insides. Satisfied that she had removed all of the crucifix pieces, Ali leaned in and punctured her full bottom lip with her fangs and made it all better with a long, lingering, sustenance rich kiss.

Allison Whitehall had always been a frugal girl and, never one to waste a gift, she sat down on her own cot and stared into Bobby Singer's startled eyes as he stepped up to peer into the room and watched as she began to lick the blood and gore sensuously from her hands.


	9. Chapter 9

Sam and his father drove mile after mile in virtual silence. John's thoughts turning, not so much to what Bobby had said but to what he hadn't mentioned, while Sam's thoughts strayed to schoolwork still to be done, a missed interview and to Jessica Moore. His girlfriend said she was okay with him staying with his dad a few more days or even for a week but he could tell by the sound of her voice that she was anything but. He really didn't blame her. He was screwing up his future and had left her, however temporarily, for a family he barely talked about and that he hadn't seen in years. A headache gathered behind Sam's eyes and he rubbed them with a sigh.

"So, Sammy, was that girl of yours upset that you wouldn't be home right away?"

Sam wanted to squirm in his seat but resisted the urge. He was a grown man, had lived with and made love to the woman of his choice and of his dreams but discussing her with his father didn't seem right. He wasn't like Dean banging every waitress or bartender or bank teller he came in contact with and feeling comfortable enough with Dad to leave almost nothing to the imagination.

As a teen Sam had idolized Dean but as he got older he found he didn't have his brother's tastes or his appetites or his ease of camaraderie with their father and he knew that, at that moment, it didn't really matter what he said about Jess. His father was worried about the calls from Bobby and would only listen with half a heart, if that. "She was a little upset that I missed the interview but she says another will come along, maybe Harvard Law."

Try as he might Sam couldn't keep the sarcasm and resentment from creeping into his voice and John turned to glance at his youngest son with fire in his eyes, a fire that he quickly banked, but too late. He knew Sam could always read volumes in his eyes, could always see through all of his lies even if he told them to protect both of his boys. What had Sam read this time, he wondered? That he was worried sick about Dean? That he was pissed at Sam for putting his own plans and interests before the welfare of his own brother? That perhaps he cared more for Dean than for him?

It wasn't like that John told himself. It had never been like that. It was only that, from the time they were little, Dean seemed to get it. He seemed to know that the world was full of evil and that it was their job to hunt it down and kill it. While Sam…well, Sammy was different and John always felt that, if he could have, Sam would have traded places with any number of kids he went to school with, in any little jerk water town just to have a 'normal' life.

As it turned out Sam had run off to college as soon as he was able whereas Dean had taken to hunting like a duck to water and seemed to want nothing more out of life. It wasn't that he loved Dean any more than Sam; it was just that Dean was more like him. They were two sides to the same coin and when he said jump, Dean just asked with a smile, "Off which cliff?"

"Listen, Sam," John began keeping his eyes on the road, "I know you'd rather be a million miles away and doing anything but this…'

"No!" Sam cut in, "Don't get me wrong, I want to be here. Ellen's your friend and Dean's my brother. He took care of me most of my life and if he's in trouble I want to help."

Meaning I didn't? John thought angrily but he kept his peace as they continued to head toward Bobby's place. The older hunter had called one more time and John had put him on speaker as he relayed the simple message that both Ellen was doing much better but that Dean was in trouble. The connection was broken before John could grill Bobby and he became even more agitated. Had he heard something more in Bobby's voice other than just the message?

They passed an eighteen-wheeler and John brought the truck back into the right hand lane and the conversation back to the situation at hand. "So, you think you're up to this?" John threw out the challenge and Sam rose to it.

"Yes, Sir." Sam replied and laughed uncertainly wondering what the hell kind of a question was that to ask. Did he doubt Sam's commitment to his brother, to his family, at this late date?

"You'll do everything exactly as I say and exactly when I say to do it?" John then asked.

Sam really began to wonder what his father was driving at. Just how worried was he about Ellen and Dean? "Yeah…yeah sure," Sam vowed but John heard the uncertainty in his voice.

"You don't sound so sure," John retorted as the truck took the final turn onto the road leading to Sioux Falls.

"Dad, I'll do whatever I have to!" Sam said vehemently, his father's apparent lack of faith pissing him off. He knew the ropes. How could he not? Hunting had been the only life he'd known for eighteen years. Whatever was wrong at Bobby's, whatever had happened to Ellen or to Dean, he was fully prepared. What he wasn't prepared for was his father's final question.

"Even help me kill your brother?"


End file.
